It’s official! Tony winner Phylicia Rashad will direct August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Rashad is no stranger to Wilson’s work, having starred in Gem Of The Ocean, penultimate entry in August Wilson’s 10-play cycle.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone will star some heavy hitters including Keith David and Tony winner Lillias White. As well as Skye Barrett, Gabriel Brown, January LaVoy, Vivian Nixon, Nathaniel James Potvin, Raynor Scheine, Erica Tazel, John Douglas Thompson, and Glynn Turman.
Previews April 24 with an opening set for May 8
“set in 1911 in a Pittsburgh boarding house, where tenants come and go, forming a community that is altered time and time again. The daily routine of meals, conversation, gossip, arrivals and departures, and the changes that occur within this fluid grouping of people, is set against a great tide of Americans of African descent, only 50 years out of bondage, who are moving toward the industrial cities of the North in search of economic opportunity, lost family members and new beginnings.”
When asked what makes Wilson’s plays so remarkable:
I think his subject matter was certainly unique, and what he was doing with that subject matter was extraordinary. He was giving us a look at America in the 20th century through the lives of the residents of the Hill district in Pittsburgh. He gave us a sense of what the times were and how people were living in those times.” – Phylicia Rashad
